Student-sex trial for former Steele Middle School official starting in Muskegon

MUSKEGON, MI – The jury trial for Thomas Edward Lopez, a former Steele Middle School official charged with repeated sex acts with a female student more than six years ago, is expected to start Tuesday, April 23.

Lopez, 37, of Norton Shores is charged with one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a victim at least 13 and younger than 16 and one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct. If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of up to life in prison on the first-degree count and 15 years on the second-degree.

Lopez worked as a student specialist at the middle school, chiefly responsible for discipline of students with behavioral issues. He was placed on unpaid suspension after his arrest May 8, 2012, and terminated in June 2012.

He denies the allegations and has received support from family members, friends and some co-workers and former students.

The trial was to begin Tuesday morning with jury selection. The trial is scheduled to take seven days. Senior Assistant Muskegon County Prosecutor Robert Hedges is facing off against defense attorney Shawn P. Davis in the courtroom of 14th Circuit Judge Timothy G. Hicks.

In testimony at Lopez’s 60th District Court preliminary examination in June 2012, the alleged victim told of a series of alleged sexual encounters with Lopez at the school while she was in the seventh and eighth grades in 2005 through 2007, when she was 13 and 14. She gave detailed accounts of the alleged sexual encounters, which she said happened five or six times throughout those two school years.

She said she and Lopez met frequently during that period, approximately three times a week and sometimes as often as twice a day. She said sometimes Lopez would come to a class and summon her in person, sometimes call the teacher and sometimes send a student with a pass to get her.

Under cross-examination, she said she was unable to remember other details, such as when in the school year the encounters began or which teachers and students were in the classes from which Lopez allegedly summoned her to meet with him. She acknowledged calling Lopez on a near-daily basis once she was in high school and no longer attending Steele, which is now part of the merged Muskegon Middle School.

Defense attorney Davis argued at that hearing that she had no credibility, attributing her accusation to jealousy after seeing Lopez -- whom she admitted having had a "crush" on -- at a school soccer game in 2012 with a new girlfriend.

Prosecutor Hedges argued the opposite, attributing the young woman’s crush to Lopez's own "grooming" of her when she was a child at the school.

District Judge Harold F. Closz III at the end of the June 2012 hearing sided with the prosecution, finding the witness credible and deciding the prosecution case was strong enough to send to trial.